A performer may give a live performance (e.g., a concert or other live show) before an audience that includes one or more individuals (e.g., audience members, fans, or concertgoers). For example, a musical soloist (e.g., a singer-songwriter) may perform at a concert before such an audience. As another example, a musical group (e.g., a rock band) may perform at a concert before such an audience. As a further example, a theater troupe (e.g., including actors, dancers, and a choir) may perform a theatrical show before such an audience.
One or more audio pieces (e.g., musical pieces or spoken word pieces) may be performed during a live performance. For example, one or more songs may be performed, and a song may be performed with or without visual accompaniment (e.g., a video, a laser show, or a dance routine). In some situations, the performer of an audio piece is an artist that recorded the audio piece (e.g., as a studio recording or as a live recording). For example, a performer may perform a song that she wrote and recorded herself. In other situations, the performer of an audio piece is different from the artist that recorded the audio piece (e.g., as a studio recording or as a live recording). For example, a performer may perform a cover of a song that was written and recorded by someone else.
A machine may be configured to interact with one or more users to identify audio content. One approach is to configure the machine to perform audio fingerprinting, with an aim towards identifying an audio recording given a sample of it (e.g., the title of a song), by comparing a query fingerprint of the sample against a reference fingerprints stored in a database and attempting to find a match. Audio fingerprinting systems are designed to be robust to audio degradations (e.g., encoding, equalization, noise, etc.). However, such systems aim to identify the same rendition of a song and typically consider cover versions (e.g., live performance by a different artist) to be different songs. Cover identification systems aim at identifying a song given an alternate rendition of it (e.g., live, remaster, or remix). A cover version generally retains the same melody as an original rendition of the song, but differs from the original rendition in other musical aspects (e.g., instrumentation, key, or tempo). However, current cover identification machines aim to identify a cover song given a recording that is full, clean, or both, and are either inoperative or inaccurate when given a short and noisy excerpt (e.g., a brief recording by a smart phone at a concert).